What is Beta Canon?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 2 сер 2024
- Beta canon, external lore, the books, games, comics and more that lies outside of the shows. What it the role of Star Trek's myriad of other tales and stories across other formats and how should we, as fans and an audience, treat them? How does the Star Trek itself treat them?
Chapters
00:00 What is Beta Canon?
01:43 Why is Beta Canon?
02:56 Consistent Worldbuilding
05:38 Plot vs Lore
09:55 Inspirations
14:22 Summary
Star Trek Online developed by Cryptic Studios and Perfect World.
Star Trek Picard/Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks/Enterprise/Voyager/Deep Space Nine/Discovery and The Next Generation are all owned by Paramount Pictures/CBS and distributed by CBS.
Star Trek Destiny / Star Charts published by Pocket Books
Star Trek Adventures published by Modiphius Entertainment
Star Trek Resurgence developed by Dramatic Labs and published by Bruner House
This Video is for critical purposes with commentary. - Ігри
I enjoyed _STO_ 's handling of the rise of the Romulan Republic, as well as Sela's character arc as she found out more about her mother. I also thought the Iconian War allowed the writers to tie in and tie up a whole bunch of loose story ends. Seven also becoming a representative of the Borg Cooperative was also a nice touch. And we got to see a progression with photonic life forms like the Doctor.
I had a fair share of my critiques of STO's story, but these were definitely high points in their storytelling. I have fond memories of my Romulan toon 🙂 The Romulan Republic was the perfect addition to shake up things, but not too much.
I LOVE the look of the Romulan Republic uniforms
sevens portrayal in picard is better. her home wasnt the borg after the events of voyager
Paraphrasing Lucy Lawless on the Simpsons. Whenever you see a continuity error, a wizard did it, or in this case Q.
The one thing i want from Beta to become Alpha is the Earth/Romulan War Novels. These novels did draw on material that was written up by Rick Berman that was supposed to be in Seasons 5 and 6 and 7.
I loved the Destiny timeline of books. The only gripe is that when they wrote Coda to end the book series, they made a perfectly logical way to actually keep the stories going, but ended it anyways.
That really pissed me off. What a huge slap in the face to the loyal customer base who kept the books profitable for years.
I bought the first Coda book as audio book and listened through it. But as it became apparent that it was the end of the book timeline and the authors were just going to kill all the characters, I stopped there because it really felt like a slap in the face. I have no intention of reading any of the novels based on the new Trek series. And because Star Trek is very hard to even legally watch in Europe thanks to the streaming service ploys, I'm not invested in the new series at all but that's besides the point.
They even had a foreword about how they didn't want it to be like the Legends issue in Star Wars and wanted to treat fans with respect and then immediately did not do that.
Agree with the commenters here - you could have easily had a "novelverse" and the TV shows running concurrently; it had been done for DECADES during the TOS movies/TNG/DS9/VOY period.
I did feel like my time, and my latinum, were wasted reading & buying all those novels.
That is the thing. Because Coda has a place that could have kept it going, there is nothing stopping CBS from telling them to keep things going a few years in the future.
The main reason, was CBS made it clear from the beginning of the books, that any new additions in events post the last entry, which is Nemesis, the books would have to adapt.
The main issue was always going to be that damned supernova of Abram's creation.
Which Star Trek Online could deal with really well.
With Coda ending, it allows new readers like me to go back and read the books from that history, since they will often start with popular titles, like The Destiny Trilogy, which I have not read. Having read Coda, I can go and get the books that were marked as key history events to read in the previous list, which is really cool.
We new readers will not start if the books are open ended.
This 'beta content' is the primary reason I watch (and am subscribed to) your channel. Watching your videos on stuff outside of the mainstream Star Trek materiel has been eye-opening - especially the narrated playthroughs of Star Trek games (including Star Trek online), I genuinely enjoy these playthroughs as if they were an episode of Star Trek I would have otherwise missed.
So, thank you for this content. It is much appreciated.
I would def port over the Earth-Romulan War novels. It's head canon for me.
I wish they’d add the Chodak species from a few 90s TNG games into canon, they were really cool.
I think Lower Decks is a great vector for which to insert Beta stuff into.
Lower Decks is total shit.
@@docsavage8640100% it’s cringeworthy garbage shit
I would go with Prodigy being a better option, or even better, any new show with the Enterprise G.
@@docsavage8640 so is your take on the show
they should not have canceled the one startrek show people actually liked. fans dont want a hard cap on 5 seasons for shows. nothing great should lasts only one season or two seasons.
Defenetly the Romulan Republic from STO, It'd be kinda cool to see "Heroic Romulans" in Lower Decks. And how much of a "mind fuck" it would be for them.
I'd like to see a Trek show "adopt" some of the books/games not as canon but as "Historical Fiction". That is in world the books are telling's not of exactly what happened but taking things that happened as inspiration for the book. That way they can say anything they want in the books can be in cannon but also any issues from the books are the book author taking "creative liberties" with the historical events.
I swear that is what Quark was doing in DS9.
I distinctly remember commentary on Ezri being a certain captain in a story.
While the Enterprise F is now technically no longer Beta Canon, I want to see the adventures of Captain Va'Kel Shon on it. I really love the Odyssey class design and want to see it on screen for more than a 3 minute cameo.
I'm 100% with you. The Odyssey took the place of the Sovereign as my favorite Enterprise design. And an Andirian captain would be a great idea.
My headcanon is that the canon 'F' isn't just mothballed as insinuated by ST:P, but will be put through a heavy refit and end up as the Yorktown variant for relaunch under Captain Shon in 2409... and that the 'G' only serves a few years in the meantime, before being retired in one way or another (destroyed, re-re-christened back to Titan... whatever).
@@berthulf That's how I see it as well. Have the G the interim Enterprise while the actual Big E is being refitted.
Oh man Beta cannon is WILD. I've been reading the books and just started Voyager : Acts of Contrition. Janeway is the cause of the end of the multiverse and she's also helps to save the multiverse. WILD.
Sounds like a Voyager story alright.
Star Trek fans are the only fans of that talk about their respective entertainment like its a documentary.
I want Captain Ezri Dax and the Aventine!
Check out the latest episode of Star Trek Online - Capt. Dax is involved in helping us fight off an invasion of Mirror-Universe Borg.
@@DeaconBlues117 So I've heard. I really want to see her live action again though.
Can we admit though that Star Trek has A LOT of conflict in it but we are just led to focus on what's going on outside of the constant wars? Even with putting a more optimistic view on society conflict is always present it seems in Star Trek. Sto seems to fit the mold here.
Some of the books are good some are bad, but Una MacCromack's books are always amazing.
Thank you memory alpha and beta!
Ooof 11:53 Scraping the paint off the bulkheads on that pull out of drydock there
The Rise and Fall of Kahn .... great 2 part book series.
I would love to see Piotr Michael reprise his role as Ambassador Spock on Lower Decks...maybe referencing what happen in Resurgence
I like the idea that everything is in its own little universe. Everything is canon, just not everywhere.
If it wasn't for your videos including stuff from ST online, I'd have never have started playing. So thanks for content.
I was wondering if other people had fallen down the STO rabbit hole due this channel.
15:44 I really like the approach of the Myriad Universes books, where the story’s beginning comes from a canonical source (like a TV episode) and then becomes an alternate history story where the timeline diverges from what was shown on-screen.
I've referenced the first Myriad Universes novel,“Infinity’s Prism”, specifically the second of the three novellas in the book, “Places of Exile”, due to it containing a great example of a different interpretation of the Prime Directive. The fact that it’s in a book automatically makes it beta-canon; however, the story begins with events portrayed in the Voyager episode “Scorpion”, before the event that created the alternate timeline; the perspective of Chakotay perfectly matches what we see in the canon episode. Therefore, I would argue that the following excerpt from the book could ALMOST be considered canon:
“I'm not convinced this is a Prime Directive situation,” Chakotay said. “These aren't the Kazon trying to steal our replicators. The Vostigye have just developed differently than we did. They were forced off their planet early by a geological cataclysm, concentrated on building artificial habitats instead of warp drive. They're behind us in some ways, but they could teach us plenty about environmental engineering & robotics.”
would def port over the sto 2410 uniforms
The position of cardassia and romulan space in maps always annoys me. DS9 has plenty of dialogue that places them bordering each other but seems to have been ignored
Thank you very much for that, have a happy and blessed day
There are lots of Beta stuff I want to be ported, but only in a concept form. The medium of the Beta canons are different from TV or movies, so changes must be made for it to work narratively in Alpha canon. A silly example, STO's Iconian War where everything was Iconian did it. If the whole story line was to be explored in one show with one crew, like the game, it would feel contrive and the universe too small. If bread crumbs of the arc was explored through multiple crews through multiple shows/movies with appropriate theme, then it would feel grand. A hundred-thousand years worth of conspiracy and scheming would make more sense narratively in that case.
My headcanon is that STO the start of the temporal wars hence the huge amount of conflict and diverse ships
I just want Trip to be canonically alive.
The big problem with Beta canon is that alot of it contradicts other Beta canon works, and you can't just hand wave it away with "multi-verse" or "different timelines". I've even read books where I swear the author hasn't watched the shows, or at least hadn't watched them in a long time before writing the book, because they directly contradict things that happen on the show, and not in ways that are neccessary to the plot of the book, just the author got it wrong.
At least it's not anywhere near as much of a mess as the old pre-disney Star Wars books, half of those are worse than fan-fiction. Although, the mainline books that follow the Solo's and Skywalkers are very good.
It's simple. Multiple, multiple timelines.
the Xwing series was good
The Lives of Dax. That book would make a great anthology series.
Well rick, the only thing i can say is that i love your channel and that you deserve way more subs than you got. The amount of time and effort you must have put in this channel is amezimg!
Love this lore conversation ❤
Making a two dimensional chart of space is questionable anyway
Cardassians and Romulans could have a border above or below the shown plane
I love your content! Keep it coming! I love the added Beta content, it keeps my imagination going about Star Trek!!!!!
I'll always consider books, comics, games etc. canon unless absolutely irrevocably overwritten by the shows/movies.
I'd especially love to port over the Return of Kirk novels, Romulan War novels, Imzadi novels, New Frontier novels/comics, Star Trek Continues, Early Voyages comics, Q Continuum novels, the second five year mission...
Articles of the Federation is one of my favorite books so I would love to have President Nanietta Bacco make it into alpha continuity.
I'm quite happy to think of alpha cannon as the 'prime' timeline, and all of the books/games/etc as alternate realities that have a grounding in the the on-screen content, and then go on to give depth to certain characters/places. If there are conflicts in the book I'm reading with the show, so what? It's still enjoyable and can still give extra depth. It's the depth of lore that draws me in, and keeps me interested
Ric, please tell us.. how is admiral Hale? We are worried about him and the rest of the crew!! 😢
I suspect he will be fine. I expect something probably within the next week or two.
@@rolandmiller5456 hopefully..
I would have loved to have seen the Romulan wars planned for further seasons of Enterprise.
I'd make the Vesta Class canon
Discussion piece! I didn't know this was Venom Geek Media now. LOL
I think you accidentally discovered a way to describe the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars fans. Star Trek is for technically inclined nerds and Star Wars is for more fantasy inclined nerds.
Star Trek has always been a little more about the ships and technology on display being used to tell a story. Admittedly, Star Wars has a bit of that. However the characters, mainly Jedi and Sith which are definitely a fantasy element, are the focus of the lore. It is far more about the people and characters than Star Trek is.
id love a Star Trek Legacy game with a Destiny book mod.
TNG Season 7 Episode 11 "Parallels" established that the Star Trek universe canonically is an infinite multiverse. Given that, I find the terminology of "Alpha Canon" and "Beta Canon" to be strange and misleading, since literally every possible storyline _is_ canon somewhere in some branch or other. I prefer the terms "Prime Universe" or "Prime Timeline" for the main continuity as I consider them to be more accurate.
I remember an episode in the Simpsons where Bart and the Comic Book Guy discuss an event in a fictional show (probably "Radioactive Man"). The Comic Book Guy says something along the lines of "This was a non canon crossover, so it never really happened". As to which Bart replies: "Nothing of this really happened."
It is the same thing with Beta Canon. It might not what the actual continuity ends up being but that's beside the point. When I read a Trek book for instance, I only care if it's plausible (which many unfortunately aren't) not if it is part of a larger continuity.
Also, Beta Canon or as it is called by the … Waries (what's the equivalent of "Trekkie" or "Trekker" in the Star Wars fandom anyway) the "expanded universe" can be pretty important for a franchise. One might argue that the EU saved Star Wars from Oblivion. And to me at least, characters such as Mara Jade or Kyle Katarn will feel no less real than Kylo Ren.
It would really be nice to see the writers and authors of the bete content out there to make More continuity sense if they could do that and then make all of the external sources other than the TV shows and movies, Canon would be great.
If I make up a slightly different way of doing it the numbers soon get really silly :
(I'm just making stuff up here it isn't anything based on any official figures but I am thinking on a factor of 8 not 3 or 5 or 10) :
Thrusters : 0 to 18,000 KPH
Impulse Power : 5,000 KPH to 35,000 KPS
Warp Power = 0.025 FTL to 1 FTL
Warp Speed = 1 FTL Unit ( 299,792,458 KPS)
8 x 8 = Warp Factor 1 = 64 X FTL
64 X 8 = Warp Factor 2 = 512 X FTL
512 X 8 = Warp Factor 3 = 4096 X FTL
32,768 = Warp Factor 4 = 262,144 X FTL
2,097,152 = Warp Factor 5 = 16,777,216 X FTL
134,217,728 = Warp Factor 6 = 1,073,741,824 X FTL
8,589,934,592 = Warp Factor 7 = 68,719,476,736 X FTL
549,755,813,888 = Warp Factor 8 = 4,398,046,511,104 X FTL
Now imagine you do that for multiples of 10 or 13 or 15 then the difference between Slipstream and warp breaks down.. which is what actually seems to happen by the 26th Century.but then Discovery decided to be annoying an reference Slipstream again and slightly screw up the timeline.
But I guess a silly number to factorise by would allow the Spore Drive to make some sense & not exactly be just a fancy teleporter if the universal constant in mycelial space allows it.
I usually use beta canon when it comes to full names of characters, sometimes birthdates, names for extra ships in the background of shots, even names for like the Presidents of the Federation, captains of the starships, species names so on. Heck, even some background details here and there. There are plenty of gaps and you can just slide some in. Even the no-longer-licenced material.
The best Star Trek books I’ve read in years is the autobiography’s Picard is my favourite
I believe we are coming up on the temporal Cold war. In the lastest runs of shows they all have small parts of the larger ultimate goal.
I think this info has a place.
I honestly see it just like history. While many things in history are known and quite clear, much is also unknown or unclear about what happened.
I'd love to see Captain Ezri Dax and the USS Aventine.
Definitely I'd port in all of New Frontier. Great series, great characters, great stories, I'm just sad the book was discontinued.
I would start acknowledging that different eras of Trek are different continuities. TOS and the movies that followed are different universes than Next Generation and Strange New Worlds.
Each of these properties has a stylistic common background and association, but lore that contradicts one can be ignored in favour of that shows presentation.
This also means that the excellent novels for Next Generation aren’t invalid just because DS9 and later seasons of the show introduced concepts that overwrote the content. The fan can read them and speculate a bit on where the dividing lines are, but still enjoy Star Trek as a whole - even if not a fan of a specific implementation.
I’d add the USS Aventine, with Ezri Dax as captain of course.
I mean Star Trek is supposed to be in a multiverse so I always assumed that beta content is the history of alternative timelines while alpha content is stuff officially in the prime timeline
That's the way I like to see it
If I could bring anything over, I feel it would be the events and characters of New Frontier series in broad strokes.
What would I add??? I would add the STO glitches, but never acknowledged or mentioned in show. things like rubber banding, or loadouts resetting. The enterprise going into battle and noticing no torpedoes are available. or all of the background bridge crew are just standing at attention on their chairs sometimes. Or every time a new technology or tool, etc is introduced in the plot, it NEVER works right out of the box, and the applicable people always have to work in the background to fix it. Maybe occasionally see background extras who only play for space barbie, And they are just standing in front of replicators, or consoles, etc and never moving.
making STO Glitches canon? How About...
Captain: helm, I told you to set a course to earth...we're are going the wrong way!
Helm: I sorry sir, but my console isn't responding
Captain: Hmm Try this... go to K-7, but then try to set the course to Earth again when we alter direction
Helm: Wait this a known problem?!? Shouldn't we get an engineer to fix that glitch in our navigational system
Captain: Why waste their time when there is an easy solution, now follow my order and be quick about it!
Helm:... aye Sir
With Doctor Who and it's expansive EU we can always blame the Time War for any inconsistencies. I guess Star Trek can do that too now. I'd love to see a time travel show set in the Trek universe.
I would keep the post TNG era storyline like the Typhon Pact.
They can't. That bloody supernova wiped out that possibility, since the Romulan's are the key to that Pact.
I love you Rick.
I know its virtually impossible to make all of Trek line up and jive together, but im a big fan of Beta canon.
I just installed STO and was excited to get to scanning some nebulas, maybe do some diplomacy, set up an outpost or two. Just wanted to take some time to enjoy things slowly. Nope. Boom. Borg. Have fun.
DIS didn't do justice to Control it took from the books. Control is the reason the meek Federation prospered among the space wolves.
Many of the stories in Star Trek are decades apart and it was a very different world from one decade to the next limited by time and manpower and effort we are encountering mediums now that can produce the same works in weeks rather than years. The lore of Star Trek is a living thing and like all living things it's going to change.
Please do a review of the first splinter timeline books please
Beta Canon when Sigma Canon enters the room
My first foray into Beta canon would have been the video game Star Trek: Final Unity. A game which starts like a ‘mystery of the week’ TNG episode before starts building an overarching plot with a Romulan War, the Chodak & finally the Dyson Sohere. It tried to keep to the narrative of the time, high warp near subspace eddies could damage your ship and running the ship was a complicated enterprise (pun intended), and on lower difficulties more of the ship was automated.
I have a feeling if that game was made now it would fall fowl of contradicting lore or ignore stuff to give the game pace.
In terms of canon, we’ve all read different books, watched different shows; clearly or misremberedly movies, played different games. We all probably have different ideas of how the galaxy, geopolitics and physics works in the Star Trek universe and same is true of the people who write it.
I personally think we should celebrate those differences rather than argue it out like 11th Century biblical scholars as to what is canon.
Speaking of Canon I was under the impression that the discovery Star Trek series took place in the Kelvin another person told me that it takes place during the prime time line which is
Like it was with star wars legends before the extended media reboot (which i never had an issue with as legends was contradicting and you couldn't do new films and shows without ignoring atbleast somebof it and making changes, it was unrealistic to think that the films would bend to a 30 year old book that most audiences haven't read), they're interesting and can have great stories and characters and fix continuity problems but they are also not fully Canon and can be ignored and overwritten by shows and films and elements can be taken from those stories like ships, planets, characters and plots and reworked to fit the current continuity (like the enterprise F for star trek or thrawn for star wars).
I've always had the view of enjoy them but don't get so attached that it's a problem if it's overriden by a film or TV show. I would say though that star trek fans have generally had a much better attitude toward extended media than star wars fans (even though legends used to have a similar classification system to star trek, with the shows and films taking priority but then fans chose to ignore that and treat a book or comic the same as the films).
DS9 Relaunch is AMAZING!!!
I would import Kirk's return. Minus the Shatnerverse because those novels can be a bit hokey and farfetched. Like Terry Mattalas, Kirk's death never sat right with me. I'd want that changed too if I had the power to do something about it.
And maybe also a Phase II series. But with a different crew and ship.
I felt that the notion of the "Alpha Quadrant" was just UFP-speak meaning "our land" like many Earth nations names mean. A linguistic version of the Mercator Projection, warping definitions of other territories because for the most part, the speaker and the listener are UFP people.
The only consistent thing about Trek is inconsistency all over the place. If fans could accept that and just enjoy Star Trek for what it is they would be much happier. Unfortunately however the fandom is riddled with people with OCD who over analyze and obsess over (often meaningless) details.
Yes, getting previously established aspects wrong is annoying and sloppy but try not to let that ruin the rest of it. There is no joy in demanding anything less than perfection
My take is that overanalyzing and obscessing is fine, as long as it is a fun excercise, and not taken too seriously. As you say, trying to shoehorn everything in a continuity is an excercise in futility.
And just a little rant: some people really think that canon = continuity. It doesn't, there is a reason they are different words.
Due to Vulcans being coded as Autistic, people on the Autism Spectrum tend to gravitate towards Star Trek; of course, OCD is one of the hallmarks of Autism.
Those details may be meaningless to a Neurotypical person, but they're not to someone on the Spectrum, especially if Star Trek becomes that person’s “special interest”.
For me it doesn't matter if lore is from the tv series, games, books, fanfiction... if it fits well into my headcanon and I like it, it's legit. If a fanfiction version is cooler than the tv series, I'll take that
Tbh i remember STO a lot better than TNG, Voyager or DS9 anyways, I ignore TOS lore cuz i never watched it, and my favorite series is the Archer Enterprise anyways...
That's why i love your inclusion of beta content in the lore videos, it's a nice offer to make my headcanon even more flavorful
(I still find it weird that star trek doesn't go the "beta canon is canon until contradicted by alpha canon" approach, why is that?)
I'm old, we had the term beta canon before memory alpha/beta wikias existed
there was an era of pocket books about 10 years that was a really good expansion on canon of TNG and DS9, but I vividly remember TOS Fans telling me the same things about their novels lol
aspects of these story's were however then readily used (such as e.g. Titan) Lost era novels and articles of the federation were really cool and not really used though
If i could include any of the beta canin material into the canon, it would have to be the USS Typhon and the Valkyrie class fighters feom thr star trek invasion game.
Perhaps not the story from the game, at least bot wholesale, but the USS Typhon carrier introduced something very unique and different to the star trek universe. I dont think we have really ever seen a dedicated carrier in th canon, and it woukd be super interesting to see how it would fit in the canon.
Better! ☝🏼😌
What I would love to port to Alpha Canon the History and the Solution tr Tkon threat because I think even if the traffic's where not great and the shooting horrible. Resurgence was a great Star Trek Story that would have fit perfectly into the TNG area Series.Maybe Captain Jata Rydek met with Captain Word and we get to know the reason why we fans where betrayed of the Enterprise E not only because Worf... And it would be epic to see Jara portrayed by a Flesh and Bones Artist.
Tripp better have survived. I'm still pissed they casually killed him off in the last episode of Enterprise.
According to BTS the 2003 battlestar Galactica’s ronald d moore’s bsg remake was made purposely and cryptically vauge with how bsg’s tech worked. From the FTL jump drive to dradis. Star Trek actors have been hit with tech questions about how something works…. In episode 12(for example) this technology does this but in episode 35 it does something differently because the writer was different and the episode needed something different to happen. The whole time each actor was being asked about it as they had no idea since they were going from a script and its fictional technology. Fancy technobabble at its most.
This was according to rdm why things were kept at a “this does this” so it works with no attempt to explain why and how it works in detail. In bsg dradis is a space based radar/sensor system, it tells who and what is around the ship. No mention of the emitter or dome.
I refuse the acknowledge the Shatnerverse though.
it hard to say what could fit into star trek canon that come from beta i love the earth romulan war tholians but i think they need to change them alots
Even Star Wars does it to now just what ever is the next show can overwrite stuff from the books to realign the story’s
Trip surviving is the only piece of beta fiction I pretend is truly canon. You can’t convince me he didn’t survive.
Why are the bridges on the video games the size of banquet halls?
One thing I like about _Enterprise_ was that the designed the interior set after touring a military submarine.
_Enterprise_ still somehow ended up being roomy and spacious by comparison, however.
Gameplay.
The loss of the Destiny timeline is the 2nd biggest offense the new shows inflicted on Trek (the first being making everything darker, grittier, and excessively violent).
If I were given dictatorial control over Star Trek, I'd decanonize everything made after 2009, make the stories, ships, and characters from those books canon, and start a new show featuring the Enterprise 1701-H set 80-100 years after Nemesis.
Personally I think the darker and the grittier version of is quite good. It shows the Galaxy is not always a friendly place. I suspect that we ever go out to the Stars long after we are dead and gone there will be conflict but they're also will be peacemakers.
The Memory Beta website leaves a lot to be desired. They frequently refuse to acknowledge different continuities of licensed stories, so their Enterprise-F page claims the ship was retired in 2401 as seen in Star Trek: Picard and then launched in 2409 as seen in Star Trek Online. What???
What you said about how frustrating it is to have beta content overwritten by the next show reminds me of the current discussion around Baldur's Gate 3 and the problems the updates cause to mods. Beta canon are like video game mods. And as frustrating as it is to "lose" that content you like, hopefully the new show makes up for it and improves the universe (though your mileage may vary on that). But just because the two canons contradict doesn't mean you have to let go of one or the other. Much like the discussions around SNW and how it contradicts canon, at the end of the day, it's all fiction. Enjoy it for what it is, instead of worrying about every nit-picky detail.
Familiar situation with my Skyrim load order too. To further your analogy, some people simply choose to disable and ignore new additions and updates in favour of preserving the custom build they have made, despite the new updates being "official".
I'd bring the Hazard team from Elite Force into canon
Beta Canon is "Bar canon"; the shows (Alpha Canon) are what happened (yes, even when it contracts itself); Beta Canon- that's the shit you hear about when you're drinking at Quark's and that Ensign from the Majestic leans over to tell you what her Bolian 2nd cousin overheard a couple of captains saying...
The beauty of them introducing time travel to the Trek universe means that there have been infinite universes since TOS. When you think about it, this means that all Trek created by licensed Trek producers is canon... just not all in the Prime Universe. Just like Marvel.
I can understand why they felt the need to end the book verse but I hated it.
I'd import all of the ShatnerVerse novels into canon.
Any time an issue comes up a wizard.... I mean Q did it.
Despite Star Trek focusing on a future of peaceful unity for humanity, it’s always had a strong element of conflict. The original series had conflicts with numerous races. TNG had less, but then DS9 had the Dominion War. I don’t think being rife with conflict disqualifies STO at all, especially when the major conflicts end up being resolved more through diplomacy than through direct military action.
If i could bring something into the continuety of the shows... I would make an episode on wich they explain that discovery happens in another timeline and its not main canon. the look of the ships, the spore drive and the new enterprise are in another timeline wich is is explained on an episode on wich the crew of the ship encounters an anomaly that transport them to another universe wich would be the discovery universe
So what would Gamma and Delta canon be?
(Assuming we're naming canons after the galactic quadrants)
Memory Gamma is proper fanfiction, as opposed to licensed non-canon fiction.
I wonder of the company that makes printers and stuff calls their new things in development beta canon